King and Joker

by Peter Dickinson

  “But Durdy, you said …”

  “I daresay I said it never used to gain. That’s not the same as doesn’t gain now, is it, Miss?”

  “But twenty minutes in a day!”

  “You can’t count on anything these days. Dearie me, no. You can’t count on anything.”

  After the sudden spurt of proper Durdy-talk the old voice lost its energy between sentence and sentence.

  “Oh, Durdy, you do sound tired. Shall I ask Father to come and look at you after supper.”

  “His Majesty was here an hour ago. Perhaps I am a wee bit tired, darling. Give Durdy a little kiss and then good-night.”

  That was the wrong way round. Durdy was supposed to say that when she tucked you in for the night. Again Louise felt the frustrated pressure of tears dammed somewhere behind her eyes as she bent to kiss the chilly cheek. She completed the ritual in its proper fashion, though still the wrong way round.

  “Good night, sweet repose. Lie on your back and not on your nose.”

  Durdy didn’t even smile.

  Louise raced down the stairs and swung herself round the half-landing to take the last flight. As she did so Pilfer marched across her line of sight along the corridor below. He didn’t seem to notice her as he stalked past, silent as one of the Palace ghosts, his pale and hollow-cheeked head stiff at the top of his black attire. Albert was right—he did look as if he were attending a death; even his gloves were black. Pilfer! Whoever had opened the cages in the zoo had worn cotton gloves and left a thread of black by one of the locks! It couldn’t be Pilfer, but …

  Normally Louise would have waited on the half-landing until the gong sounded. It wasn’t exactly a rule, because it was one of those things you knew without having to be told, but you didn’t start making for the dining-room until Pilfer had sounded the gong. If you happened to be in the lobby when he appeared, you pretended to have some tiny mission to complete elsewhere, so that you could go and come back. It was as if striking the gong was a ritual central to Pilfer’s craft, a summons to the royal family to gather for a meal which he would then serve in due order. It would detract from the ritual if the family was already there, slavering in the lobby, while the deep round note swam along the corridors to tell them grub was up,

  But this evening Louise felt she wanted to see Pilfer strike the gong. She felt that the way he did it would tell her, somehow, something about him, about whether he was the kind of man who could at one moment be so formal and unbending and at another savagely attack Albert’s harmless pets. So she came quietly on down the stairs and turned the corner at the bottom. That was how she happened to witness the next “incident”.

  The gong, Mother said, was the ugliest object in the whole Palace, and the competition was stiff. It was a trophy of the Burma Wars, almost four foot across, hung from a frame of black wood carved with grimacing heroes and demons. It stood in the lobby which was really just a widening in the main corridor outside the dining-room and breakfast-room. It only made its noise if you knew the knack—if you biffed it at random you just got a thuddy sound out of it. You had to catch it a real wallop almost at the rim, and then keep the resonances going with little patting strokes. The dull, hammer-beaten bronze had one bright patch where Pilfer used to wallop it. Now Louise saw him pick the stick off its hook, give his cuff an absurd little flick as if to make sure it wouldn’t impede the stroke, and swing.

  In the instant before the lights went out she saw Pilfer lifted off the floor, suddenly unshaped, like a rook at the moment of impact with a car’s windscreen. Then the blast reached her and she was hurtling backwards. She felt the buffet all down her side as she banged into the carpet and sprawled draggingly along the skirting-board. What had hit her came as noise, one deep bellowing thud, like thunder clap over the Palace. When it was gone there was a shrill high whine but no other noise. She scrambled to her knees and pressed her palms to her ears to shut it out, but the whine went on. The lights behind her were still working, and she saw yellow fog billowing down towards her from the lobby. She dropped to her hands and crawled forwards, now only able to see about a foot through the choking dust. Into that visible space a chunk of plaster dropped and exploded without a sound on the carpet. She crawled on over its crumbs. There ought to be people shouting, she thought, and alarm-bells, and running feet, but she could hear no noise except the unvarying whine.

  She found Pilfer by feel. He was lying face down against the door of the dining-room. She reached up for the handle but couldn’t shift the door. She realised that she’d been holding her breath for some time against the fumes and wouldn’t be able to much longer. Desperately she got to her feet and shoved at the door, which opened wrenchingly, biting into the dining-room carpet. The lights were on in the dining-room. She stepped to one side of the door, took two deep breaths, crouched and worked her way back to where the yellow fog was now streaming in. Pilfer’s body had been partly supported by the door and had now slumped a little further into the room. She linked her hands under an armpit and hauled at him until she collapsed choking in the stinging fumes. Between spasms she saw a black sleeve close by her head. There was no hand at the end of it, but something that gleamed and seemed to be jumping about like a small trapped frog. At its third or fourth wriggle she saw that this live thing was a pulse of blood from the smashed wrist. Even in the convulsions of choking she knew what to do because Father had always insisted that the family’s Christmas charades should contain gruesome accidents which had to be realistically treated. She had no chance of getting Pilfer’s jacket off without help so she felt for the elbow joint with her right hand and dug her thumb into the softness of it while she bent the forearm back with her other hand. Pilfer’s flesh beneath the black broadcloth felt squishy and boneless and the choking made it difficult for her to keep a steady grip. She was trying to twist herself round to a better position without letting go of the joint when she was picked bodily up from the floor and carried across the room.

  “Pilfer!” she yelled. “He’s bleeding to death!”

  She felt the movement of words in her throat and a vague vibration of sound, but all she actually heard was the piercing whine in her skull. Whoever was carrying her halted, twisted her over and laid her neatly down on the yellow chaise longue against the far wall. He turned to open the windows. It was Theale.

  She shouted to him again about Pilfer and saw his lips move. The fog wasn’t so bad now, but she still couldn’t see across the room. She rolled herself off the chaise-longue and crawled back towards the door, but it was shut, with Pilfer right inside the room and Father kneeling by his body holding the arm just as she had done. Pilfer’s face was all mottled meat. Father saw her and spoke.

  “I can’t hear you,” she said. “I’ve gone deaf: I can hold the artery while you get a tourniquet ready.”

  He nodded and let her take the appalling arm. Because she was no longer trying to cope all by herself she felt a sudden wave of revulsion, but she forced it down and let Father guide her thumb to the right spot. He shouted over her shoulder at Theale, disappeared from her line of sight, came back at once with the carving-knife from the sideboard and slashed through the sleeve at the shoulder. She was just getting ready to alter her grip so that he could free the cloth from the elbow when a man’s hand moved to take over from hers. She stood dizzily up. The room was still hazed with smoke, but no worse than it often was when Nonny contrived to burn her toast. Nonny was there now, and Mother was coming through the door. Nonny put an arm round her shoulder and led her out into the lobby. Two men seemed to be fighting, but it was only Sergeant Bannerman trying to prevent one of the Palace firemen from covering the whole area with foam. A man came rushing along the corridor with a big Calor lamp.

  “Nonny, I’m deaf.”

  Louise felt her mother’s arm tighten round her shoulders. She began to laugh, and laugh still more because she couldn’t hear the sound of her own shrieking.

/>   In the middle of a tumbled dream the story princess stepped down on to the platform. She was wearing an achingly heavy crown and a nurse’s overall with nothing underneath. The wind kept snatching at the overall, which wasn’t properly buttoned, so with one hand the Princess had to hold it down while in the other she carried the proclamation she was going to read in a language she didn’t know. All the time she had to smile and smile while the people cheered. She could hear them cheering. Even in the confusion of dream the return of sound was enough to wake Louise.

  The whine was there, but far fainter, and a heavier noise was fading away. Her neck hurt. She was in her own room, which seemed to be bathed in a strange mild glow as though the moon had got inside it. She shifted and saw a hospital nurse sitting in her armchair and reading a magazine by the light of a shaded lamp.

  “Nurse.”

  She could hear her own whisper through the whine. The nurse looked up.

  “Say something, please, Nurse.”

  The nurse was a spruce middle-aged Englishwoman, who gave Louise an understanding smile but shook her head.

  “I think I can hear things now,” explained Louise. “Wasn’t that an aeroplane?”

  “Just now, Your Highness? Yes, I think one did go over.”

  The voice sounded furry, though Louise could see from the movement of the nurse’s lips that she was speaking with extra care.

  “Great!” she whispered. “I’m not going to be completely deaf, like Alexandra. How’s Mr Pilfer?”

  Still with the same mechanical smile—her version of public face—the nurse rose, crossed the room and felt Louise’s pulse.

  “You go back to sleep my dear,” she said. “You oughtn’t to be awake at all, the size of the sedative they gave you. You shut your eyes and stop fretting. That’s right.”

  It was true that a treacly heaviness seemed to be sucking Louise back into the bog of sleep. She listened to the whine of another jet going over. It wasn’t quite right—too dull—but it was noise. She smiled until she remembered how the nurse had avoided answering the question about Pilfer, but she was too sleepy to open her eyes and ask again.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Lulu,” said Father. “You did bloody well …”

  “If only Theale hadn’t dragged me clear! I was quite all right.”

  “He thought he was rescuing you. I daresay I’d have done the same if I’d got there first. But I can’t have been more than a few seconds behind him, and I thought poor Pilfer was a goner the moment I saw him. It wasn’t just his arm, darling. He had bits of gong all through him. Try not to think about it. Now, listen, Lulu—d’Arcy wants to see you. Are you up to that?”

  “Yes, of course, provided he doesn’t whisper. You’re a bit woolly still, and this whining noise hasn’t quite gone, but it’s better. Will it go right away?”

  “Sir James was pretty optimistic, and he wouldn’t lie to me. My own guess, Lulu, is that it’ll clear right up, but you may get it back sometimes when you’re very tired or under tension.”

  “I don’t want to be deaf and boring—I really don’t.”

  “You’ll be all right. Now, do you want me to stay while you talk to d’Arcy?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be shaking hands with all those American lawyers?”

  “I’ve cancelled everything. It’s up to you, Lulu.”

  “Then stay. If he clams up you can ask him questions. He’ll have to tell you.”

  Only after she’d spoken did Louise remember that Father might have quite different reasons for wanting to stay to hear what she told Mr d’Arcy.

  In fact the Superintendent was very forthcoming. He sat by Louise’s bed, taking his endless notes, while she described how she’d come down the stairs and seen Pilfer going past at the bottom.

  “Was he carrying anything, Ma’am?” said d’Arcy, who had clearly been getting used to the conventions in the last few days. Even his suit seemed a better fit.

  “No. I don’t think so. I certainly didn’t see anything in the hand nearest me. Then I came on down the stairs and when I reached the corner he was just getting ready to biff the gong.”

  “One moment. Would he have had time to do anything to the gong before you saw him again?”

  “I don’t think so. He was hovering in front of it, and then he gave his sleeve a hitch and bashed it, forehand, as though he thought he was Jimmy Connors.”

  “Are you saying that he seemed to you to hesitate and then to hit the gong harder than usual?”

  “You had to hit it pretty hard to make it work at all.”

  “Superintendent,” said Father. “Are you implying that Pilfer might have seen something wrong with the gong?”

  “That’s not exactly the position, Sir. You remember I reported to you on your return to London that as a result of an incident in Prince Albert’s menagerie I had decided to include the series of practical jokes in my investigations? And that, on the assumption that the whole series was the work of one person it had been possible to eliminate all the potential perpetrators except Miss Fellowes and Mr Pilfer?”

  A savage-sounding grunt from Father. Louise looked at him. She thought of Nonny’s strong arm round her shoulders, holding her steady through the bucking spasms of hysterics. If you were mad, you could be loving and ordinary at one moment, and murderous the next, and perhaps not even know yourself what you had done. Nonny was strong enough to kill McGivan, but she could never have made a bomb. But somebody trying to protect Nonny …”

  “We respected your wishes, Sir,” said Mr d’Arcy, “and pursued our investigations along other lines. But as a result of this latest incident I ordered a search of Mr Pilfer’s room, and the following articles were discovered.”

  He flipped back several pages in his notebook and began to read.

  “One manual on bomb construction; one ditto on unarmed combat; one aerosol can of red paint; several pairs of black cotton gloves, one with a thread pulled which appears to match a thread found on one of the opened cages in the menagerie; a large tin can, pierced with breathing-holes and containing a quantity of what appear to be mouse-droppings; a quantity of electrical tools and apparatus suitable for the construction of a bomb …”

  “I know about that. He was a radio ham.”

  “Yes, sir. And finally an empty package to which one of our dogs, trained to detect explosives by smell, reacted very strongly.”

  “Good God!” said Father. “Pilfer! No question of anybody having planted the things there, I suppose.”

  “I think not, sir. I understand that the deceased was touchy about people meddling with his radio apparatus and kept his room securely locked.”

  “Good God!” said Father again. “Of course he did. How does your theory work, Superintendent?”

  “I think we have to assume, Sir, that we are dealing with a mind becoming steadily more and more unbalanced. I think the progression of incidents shows this—the first three more or less harmless, then the damage to property in the shape of Sir Savile Tendence’s trousers, then an attempt to ruin Sergeant Theale’s career, then the clearly unbalanced cruelty to the animals in the menagerie.”

  “You’ve left out McGivan,” said Louise.

  “I’ll return to that later, Ma’am. Now, as I told you, our process of elimination had reduced the suspects to Pilfer and the extremely unlikely person of Miss Fellowes. Let us suppose that Pilfer learnt of this fact—I’ve never known a place like this for rumours, Sir. The Yard’s bad enough, but here! If you’ll excuse me saying so …”

  “We did tend to say things in front of him pretty freely,” said Father. “I don’t think we’d have discussed that, but …”

  “He might have worked it out from our not talking about it,” said Louise.

  “Exactly,” said Mr d’Arcy. “I don’t think anyone really knows how the mind of a madman functions, but I think i
t’s reasonable to suppose that he realised that the game was up and decided to go out with, well, a bang. We found a piece of card in his jacket pocket with a red cross on it, and another of the objects in his room was a felt pen of the right shade. I understand he normally wore gloves when on duty.”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Louise.

  “Let’s think,” said Father. “Your idea is that this was a final practical joke, meant to make us all go on suspecting each other? But he must have known that the kit would be found in his room. Surely he’d have disposed of that first.”

  “Perhaps he felt he hadn’t time before we got onto him,” said Mr d’Arcy. “Or having set the bomb he may have decided to get it over—otherwise he’d have had to sleep on it, which even for a madman …”

  “Quite,” said Father. “Or he might have wanted us to find out in the end, so that we’d know who’d been fooling us. Yes, I see it makes a sort of sense, but I still don’t believe it.”

  “If you’d seen some of the suicides I’ve seen, sir. The things they get up to. There’s some of them whose one idea seems to be to go out in a way which’ll get them into The Guinness Book of! Records, it doesn’t matter how messy or painful. I assure you this isn’t all that out of the ordinary, sir.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I’ve known Pilfer all my life—much better than you’d realise. He taught me wireless. I spent a whole evening with him, calling up distant pals, only a month ago. There must have been somebody else.”

  “I assure you, sir, that everybody else has already been eliminated from the series of jokes. We’ve put in some very thorough work on that in the last few days. And have you asked yourself how the red cross got into his jacket pocket? Her Royal Highness was on the scene within a very few seconds of his death. Are you suggesting that somebody slipped it into his pocket while he was alive?”

  “No, but …”

  “I assure you, sir, that I haven’t got a closed mind. I’ll check and re-check the evidence. I’ll go very thoroughly into the possibility of all that gear being planted in Pilfer’s room. All I’m saying is that as of now this appears to be the most likely solution.”